No One Quite as Blind
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: (His Last Vow Adlock AU) All the things that she could - should - say clog her throat and she is so helpless to do anything except sit here, with his hand so still in hers. It's all the fault of sentiment. She always knew he was right about it
1. 1

**A/N:** **Written for an anonymous Tumblr prompt which read: "Can u write something about adlock in hospital or amnesia adlock? The thought of Sherlock or Irene dying isn't very nice, but I think it's an interesting plot"**

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They wasted so much time Before, all part of the elaborate game. Only, it wasn't a game of their own devising, and neither of them won, not really. Yet, she can't find it in her heart to regret the game for without it they would never have crossed paths.

She would send a bouquet of roses to Jim Moriarty if she could, if he was still living. A thank you for services rendered, though he didn't realise it at the time.

She should send him two bouquets, actually. It was the turn of the game when he forced that rooftop showdown that ultimately led to the two of them together in Saint Petersburg. Sherlock was pale, then, and drawn, his hair blond and he moved stiffly thanks to the knife wound scored along his ribs. And she had the information he wanted, though she was auburn then and it took him a moment.

They broke cover together and stayed that way until Serbia, and then…Then.

She got word to Mycroft, and he should have had her disappear but even then he could see what she was blind to.

Mary Morstan. Agatha Gwyneth Rennick-Ashbury. She recognised her in a heartbeat, how could she not? And as Sherlock slept in the bed that for so long was his though now was theirs, she slipped out and extracted a number of promises. Safeguards and guarantees.

Information is power. She can never forget that. One carefully dropped word and _Mary_ would have ceased to be a problem.

 _Sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side._

She should have listened. She should have paid more attention. Sentiment. How blind could she have been? And now look where it's gotten them!

She'd kill that woman herself if John didn't look ready to do it for her.

(If it didn't mean leaving this room. Leaving Sherlock, for any amount of time, and how her heart aches at the very thought of not being here beside him.)

She's never said the words, and now they crowd her throat alongside all of the stories, the memories. How odd that she never once murmured them, whispered them, declared them to the world and now-

No. She must not think like that. She _cannot_ think like that.

But his fingers are so cold.

She rubs them between the palms of her hands, and permits herself to think that maybe he can feel her.

There should be music. He should have music. Yes, the whoosh of oxygen through the tube that parts his lips is rhythmic but it's not music. And nor are the footsteps in the hall, the muffled voices and words that they think she can't hear.

 _Pneumonia…second surgery…cardiac…must consider the possibility_

Whispers borne to her ears on a gentle breeze and they're wrong, they're all wrong, they must be. It's not Sherlock, it's someone else. It has to be someone else.

Distantly, she is aware of the tears trickling slowly down her cheeks, but it is as if it is happening to someone else. She cannot be sitting in this chair and Sherlock cannot be lying in that bed, his fingers so still entwined with hers, face ashy pale.

It's not _her_ Sherlock. It may look like him, but it can't really be him.

And it's all _her_ fault, that woman, that she-devil. He trusted her, they both did, and now –

Sentiment. Such a flaw. She tried to burn it out of herself, she did, but then she saw Sherlock in that crowded street in Saint Petersburg and the scars split right open.

 _I was just playing the game_.

The game is over. Dead. And has been for so long. How could it touch them now? How could it leave Sherlock splayed on a wooden floor and his dark red blood soaking the crisp white shirt that he put on not two hours before after rolling out of their bed, the stain a rose unfurling into bloom?

(If she'd known what was going to happen, how soon he'd be wired to machines and a surgeon forcing his heart to beat, could she have said the words? Or would he have looked at her as if she were mad?)

They staged a fight. Staged a break-up. Nothing new, all part of the plan. They planned to stage a reconciliation. Then suddenly he was in emergency surgery and he wasn't breathing and his chest was cracked open so the bullet-torn damage could be repaired, and next thing _the whole story_ came tumbling out from her half-numb lips, the streak of blood across John's cheek from where he wiped on hand across his face looking black against his blanched skin.

And now, she squeezes Sherlock's hand, brushing her thumb gently over the smooth pale skin before setting it down to rest next to him. Ever so carefully, softly, as if she could hurt him now unconscious and pumped full of morphine, she presses her lips to his forehead and murmurs, "This wasn't part of the game, you know."

They are not the three words she longs to say, the three words that she has never said and he has never heard. Those words have no place now. They will not help them to win.

 _This is just losing._


	2. 2

The first time he wakes ( _properly_ wakes, sedation lightened and intubation removed), his eyes empty and glazed, he doesn't know her. She very much doubts he even knows himself. That verdigris gaze, so sharply piercing normally and so dull now, flicks tiredly over the unfamiliar room, landing on her at last. She manages a smile for him, and squeezes his hand. His brow twitches into the barest frown, before his eyes slip closed again.

And the questions that lurked in his eyes for that brief moment feel like a punch to the gut. She can't breathe with it, can't think, can only kiss his fingers and fight the tears from her eyes.

Suddenly, it's so much easier to speak. The words that for so long have clogged her throat rush forward in a torrent, spilling forth and she can't stop them, can only go with them.

She tells him of Saint Petersburg, of the way the world shifted on its axis when she laid eyes on him for the first time in a year and half. She never believed that he was dead, always harboured those doubts deep in her heart because if anyone was going to survive it would be him.

She tells him of Toledo, of the way her heart fluttered when he laid his land so lightly on hers. His hair was auburn, and it burned with beautiful righteousness beneath the setting sun.

She tells him of Tehran, of the shining of his eyes when he swallowed and leaned across the table to press his lips to hers at last. He tasted of the wine they were drinking, mouth hesitant as a schoolboy and she had so much to teach him, and oh _how she looked forward to it_.

Stockholm, and she shivered when the rain wet her dress through, so he took off his heavy cloak and wrapped it around her. She never asked him where he found such a cloak, but the way it swirled as he moved took her breath away. It smelled of mint, and tobacco, and the deep cologne he wore those six weeks through, and that night they huddled in the bed they shared and she kissed his throat and he pulled her close.

In Monaco, they masqueraded as a prince and a duchess, technically dispossessed of their titles and lands, but nobody cared because most of them lost their titles too in their grandparents' times. That party the homing ground for long-lost nobility. What was one more pair of strangers in the mix?

And she talks of London, when they came home, of the way they wove a new life for themselves together in Baker Street, earning back John's trust and forging a friendship with Mary. ( _Why_ did she ignore the alarm bells? _Why_ did she not reveal all when doing so would have made a difference? _Why? Why? Why?_ A litany of whys and she had no answer for any of them except that she was an idiot and let sentiment interfere and how she regrets every choice she made that led them here.)

She _thinks_ of Mary, at least, but she doesn't mention her and the name is a drum beat inside of her head but dammit the woman almost killed him and she's not going to remind him of that when she wants him to come back to her.

She doesn't tell him she loves him. She wants him to know her, and know his own feelings, when she says that.

But she talks until her voice cracks and her throat aches and still she keeps talking until her voice is only a whisper, and then it dies.

He wakes several times, regarding her hazily from the bed, and she is never sure if he knows her or not, though she hopes the memories and the softness in her words bring it back to him.

She drops a kiss to his forehead, soft and gentle, and lays her head on the pillow next to his. His fingers twitch, and curl around hers, but he doesn't speak and neither does she. There is no need to, not really, and if she were not afraid of disturbing all of the wires and tubes connected to his now-frail body she would lie down on the bed with him and take him in her arms, and with her touch promise him a lifetime. How she craves to be closer to him, but she must make do with this small bit of contact, hands curled together and lips to hair.

She dozes, or she must do, because she wakes and the light is different and he's shifted in the bed, not much, but enough that he can look at her now, and the soft recognition clear in every line of his face soothes the ache in her chest.

She bows her head and kisses him carefully, tongue slipping between his lips and he sighs, smiling into her mouth. She pulls back and his eyes drift closed, fingers still twined with hers.

"I wondered…when you'd wake," he whispers, his voice hoarse and unrecognisable, all beautiful sensuality lost and yet it's the sweetest music to her ears to even hear him speak. And for the first time since this whole dreadful business started, she knows he's going to be all right.


End file.
